


Kansas Sunsets

by Xanthos_Samurai



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Cuddling & Snuggling, Handwaving of canon ages, M/M, Relationship Discussions, Teen Romance, Teenagers, sexuality discussions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29244321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xanthos_Samurai/pseuds/Xanthos_Samurai
Summary: On a visit out to the Kent farm, Damian comes out as asexual to his boyfriend Jon.
Relationships: Jonathan Kent/Damian Wayne
Comments: 2
Kudos: 77





	Kansas Sunsets

**Author's Note:**

> My good buddy Orphean and I sometimes give each other challenge prompts and one of the ones she gave me was asexual Damian. As I identify as ace myself, I liked the idea a lot. I don't necessarily see Damian as ace in canon, but this is what fanfiction is for.
> 
> Because canonical ages are complicated because Comics, I'm handwaving that and saying they're both about fifteen years old here.

The best thing about Kansas, thought Damian, were the sunsets.

He and Jon were spending the weekend out on the Kent family farm, presumably to help out with some chores but really because both of them felt the need to get out of their cities once in a while. They’d worked all day and been rewarded with a big dinner and then Martha had told them to spend the evening to themselves. It was a warm evening in early summer and the air was full of insect calls and a sense of languid peace that Damian only felt when he was alone with Jon. 

It had been his suggestion to take the old truck out to one of the empty pastures and watch the sunset. Neither one of them were old enough to have a driver’s license yet, but Damian had been driving vehicles of all sorts for years and Jon was allowed to drive on the farm as long as he was careful, so nobody batted an eye. 

Now they were parked in the pasture, lying on old blankets in the bed of the pickup with sacks of grain for pillows, watching the sky kaleidoscope through every possible color as the sun sank down behind the field of newly-blooming sunflowers. Damian had grown up watching sunrises and sunsets over the ocean that surrounded the private island where he’d been raised. He was used to sunsets that took up huge expanses of sky, being able to see for miles without obstruction. Gotham sunsets were slivers and shards of light and color that you could snatch glimpses of between buildings, and then only if you were lucky. Even at the manor, the sky seemed too fragmented, too broken to hold a proper sunset. But being in Kansas gave him that same sense of hugeness, of just how big the sky really was, of how full of possibility things were. 

Or maybe it was just the company that made him feel that way. 

“Hey. I need to talk to you about something.” Damian clambered into the bed of the truck, holding two root beers. They were the old-fashioned kind, the kind that still came in glass bottles. Pa Kent refused to buy anything else.

“Uh-oh. That sounds serious.” Jon turned his head and grinned up at him. He was lying with his arms behind his head, leaning back against the sacks of grain. The day’s labors had left him a little sweaty and disheveled, his untamable hair tousled. The light from the setting sun bathed his face in tones of rose and gold, which made the blue of his eyes seem almost unnatural. 

Damian’s heart stuttered and righted itself, as if it had tripped inside his chest. Don’t think about how beautiful he is, he ordered himself. This was serious. He had to focus.

Jon must have heard his heart skip because he frowned a little.

“Is it serious?” He asked. 

“Yeah, kind of.” Damian sat down on the blanket beside him, crossing his legs at the ankles and then sinking into a cross-legged seat with a practiced ease and elegance. He was very aware of Jon watching him now instead of the sunset.

“Ohmigod, are you breaking up with me? Is this a Dear Jon thing?” Jon pushed himself upright and stared at Damian. His eyes were as wide as saucers.

“What? No. Of course I’m not breaking up with you.” Damian frowned at him. “And Dear John is when someone breaks up with you in a  _ letter _ .”

“Oh. Oh right.” Jon rubbed the back of his head with a sheepish grin, the same sheepish grin that always made Damian want to tackle him right then and there and kiss him. “Sorry, you sort of freaked me out… So what do you need to talk to me about that’s serious?”

“First, do the breath thing.” Damian held up both bottles of root beer.

Jon looked doubtfully at the two bottles in Damian’s hands.

“You should put them down before I try. I might make them too cold again and they’ll explode like they did that one time. Then you’ll get glass and stuff in your hands.”

“Then you have lots of incentive to keep it under control,” said Damian. He didn’t relinquish them.

Jon licked his lips once and focused on the bottles. Damian could  _ feel _ the force of his concentration, could sense him reaching inside himself for the embers of power that burned in him, just waiting to be summoned and kindled.

He exhaled sharply, twice, and Damian could feel the chill air of Jon’s ice breath brush past his fingers, then felt his fingers burn pleasantly against the cold glass. Both bottles were now perfectly frosted. Jon looked exceptionally pleased with himself as Damian handed him one of the bottles. They both sipped. The root beer had been room temperature before, but now it was icy cold and sweet and it burned pleasantly as it tipped down Damian’s dry throat.

“I’m getting better.” Jon said. He was looking at Damian as if he was waiting for him to agree.

“You are,” Damian acquiesced. “I told you you’d be fine if you were properly incentivized.”

“Not giving my grouchy boyfriend frostbitten fingers is definitely an incentive.” Jon put the drink aside and looked at Damian.  _ Really _ looked at him. “What’s on your mind, Damian?”

“Do you want to have sex?”

The abruptness of the question made an unexpected blush spread across Jon’s face, beneath the freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. 

“Not… like… right  _ now _ …” He glanced around the open field. “But… eventually, yeah.”

“I don’t.” 

The words were terse, bordering on harsh. Tension radiated from the stiffness in Damian’s shoulders, the sharpness of his eyes, the way his fingers curled tight around the cold bottle.

Jon put his drink aside and rested his hand on Damian’s knee, tugging a little at one of the folds of denim.

“Damian, come here. I know you’re not trying to break up with me, so just… relax, okay? Whatever’s on your mind, I’m not gonna be mad.”

Damian hesitated a moment, but he knew that Jon could and would bodily drag him over with minimal effort, so he shuffled and scooted until they were lying side by side. He was silent, collecting his thoughts, and Jon was silent, letting him. 

“I’d like to start over,” he said at last. 

“Go for it.”

“I’ve been thinking about sex a lot lately. I’ve known all about it for years, of course, but I never really thought about it for myself until I was with you. But I don’t know how I feel about… doing it.” 

“That’s okay. I’m not in a hurry, you know? We can wait until we’re both ready.” Jon tried to sound cheerful and comforting.

Damian looked away from him. “What if I never feel ready?”

Jon tilted his head. “Do you think that’s how it’ll be? You’ll never want to have sex?”

“I don’t know.” Damian sat up again and hugged his knees to his chest, resting his chin on them. “I’ve never wanted to. Not with anyone. Not even with you. And I  _ like _ you. I like kissing you and touching you and being with you, but I don’t think I want more than that. I never have.”

Jon sat up too. His hand automatically went to the spot between Damian’s shoulder blades, one of his favorite spots on Damian’s body. Damian was sharp, all acute angles and hard jabs, but there were parts of him that were smooth and soft if you knew where to look and how to touch. He rubbed his palm in little circles.

“Well… That’s okay because that’s all I want right now too.” 

Damian finally turned his head and settled his eyes on Jon. His posture loosened a little and his pulse slowed.

“I don’t want you to lie to make me feel better, Jon. Me being asexual wasn’t something you agreed to getting into this.”

“Who said anything about lying?” Jon moved his hand up to rub his fingertips against Damian’s scalp, something he knew Damian loved. “I’m happy the way we are now. Sure I always imagined us having sex eventually, but if you’re not into it, then we won’t.”

Damian melted under Jon’s fingers. He caught Jon’s wrist in one hand and pressed his lips against Jon’s knuckles. When their eyes met, the golden light from the sunset made the green and the blue blaze against the fiery sky. Jon wrapped his arms around Damian, and Damian, for once, allowed himself to be held. 

Lingering moments passed like that, the warm sunflower-scented breeze brushing both boys’ black hair. Without words, they lay back down side-by-side on the blanket in the truck bed.

“What if you change your mind and you want to have sex and I still don’t?” Damian watched the last embers of the sun sink below the sunflower horizon.

“What if a giant brain-infecting slime monster invades the planet tomorrow and we all get turned into mindless slime zombies to do its evil biding?” Jon blew a little blast of cold air into Damian’s ear, making him yelp. “What if it turns out that Bat-Cow is actually an evil alien mastermind orchestrating a bovine invasion of earth? What if we’re living in the Matrix and none of this is real? We can what-if all day long, but we’re here. Now. Together. Just enjoy that, okay?”

Damian wrinkled his nose, but there was no ire in it. The cut and dry way that Jon approached things helped him cut through the circles that his own mind was apt to run in. It was one of the many reasons why Jon was his person… Jon calmed him down and reminded him of what really mattered.

Above them, the sky had deepened to indigo and black and the stars were scattered across it like the freckles across the bridge of Jon’s nose. Damian counted them sometimes when Jon fell asleep before he did (Jon always fell asleep before he did) and knew them all by heart now.

Their hands found each other in the dark and their fingers laced together. And nothing else needed to be said. 

Except.

“I can’t believe you thought this was going to be a Dear Jon conversation,” said Damian.

“I’m never going to get to live that down, am I?”

“Not a chance.”


End file.
